Gulf health 5 years after BP spill: Resilient yet scarred
 

very interesting read: http://www.tlgnewspaper.com/gulf-hea...nt-yet-scarred

I love all the speculation in that article. Not saying the oil spill didn't have its effects, but they are making statements with nothing behind them. My favorite one was about the seaside sparrows. BP basically stated that there were no severe effects, but the article says seaside sparrow populations are down. Seaside sparrows have never been an abundant species. They rely on salt marsh habitat. Coastal marshes were disappearing before the Deep Horizon disaster. Speculative.

Same with the Mangrove island disappearing. Did the oil spill have an effect? I don't doubt it, but is that the only reason marshes and mangroves are disappearing? Hardly. Wetlands are complex systems, and one factor alone, unless that factor be a hurricane, is rarely responsible. Rather, multiple factors acting on the system cause dieoffs.

I could see the oil being responsible for some of these things, and short-term it was. But people want to claim everything they see bad to have been the result of the oil spill, and that's just speculation.

I read an article about some fella from Biloxi finding a dead dolphin on Grand Isle supposedly covered with oil. There were also tar balls near by. So, naturally, before any investigation is done, this fella gets his name in the limelight with his "dolphin murdered by oil" story.

I've seen first hand what the oil spill did. I was doing research on the coast in the spring/summer of 2010 and was in a lot of those areas. But a lot of people don't realize how resilient nature is. There will be lasting effects for a long time, no doubt, but nature will bounce back.

Well said-Smalls, I agree with you.:D

^

I agree that a lot of the stuff is over blown. But there are still areas behind east fourchon and west elmers isle beach that have never been cleaned and have massive areas of tar. I can understand that these areas are only accessible by air boat and if you stop the boat sucks down into the mud.

They will blame oil and BP until dinosaurs make a come back !


Oil is a natural resource that leaks and flows from ocean floor my the millions of barrels a year !

That's true, but there is a difference between natural and what happened in 2010. That was very unnatural. But, the fact remains, that with the exception of a few areas, it has recovered relatively well. The gulf was never the model ecosystem. Just look at the dead zone.

I don't discount what it did, or that areas around Fouchon may still be covered with mats of it. But some people want to blow it out of proportion. But that's anything related to coastal loss and Big Oil.

There was definitely a short term affect as Smalls stated it wasn't natural in the sense that it was a vast amount, but what ALWAYS seems to get ignored when talking about the BP spill is that it was NOT refined oil. This was not a tanker full of processed oil being dumped into the ocean i.e. Exxon Valdeze(sp).

Just my opinion but I think that is the major reason why the ecosystem here will recover/has recovered so much faster than other similar events.

Biggest thing is the gulf waters eat up oil , the bacteria in warm waters eat oil fast as it come to surface .

Then u hear people say " you should see the Tar Balls"


Holly beach has been having tar balls since T-Rex was walking the earth ! Tar balls are natural and form at bottom of gulf floor then roll up on beaches for years and years !

Valdez
 

Exxon Valdez was carrying North Slope crude oil headed to California for refining. The only "refining" which occurred before transport was some of the naturally occurring produced saltwater was removed from the crude before transport. Exxon Valdez was carrying 90+% Crude Oil.

The DWH spill was the oil+the produced saltwater.

Valdez Was in frezzing cold waters = zero bacteria + zero evaporation + heavy crude \ Grav oil ...

No comparison from gulf spill to Exxon

Right, the chemical and biological reactions that process crude into less hazardous substances are strongly temperature dependent. The warm Gulf waters process oil much faster than the waters off Alaska.

All the evidence I see suggests that the ecosystem is at least 90% recovered since the spill by whatever metric one wants to use: area, biomass, species. Detectable effects may linger for decades for the benefit of those who delight in working hard to find them and point them out. I can't see any big ongoing effects that most inshore fisherman should be very concerned about.

The fishing in Louisiana has been great since the spill. Get out and enjoy it.

I flew over cali coast near santa barbara 2 months ago and the slicks that i observed from natural seeps was unreal

pogeys

From: http://www.nola.com/environment/inde...134_milli.html

Pretty interesting. Paying guys not to fish. What about all the poor red snapper?


Pelagic longline bycatch reduction project, Gulf of Mexico, $20 million. Restoration of pelagic -- open-ocean -- fish affected by the spill is the goal of the project. Long-line fishing in the Gulf gnerally targets yellowfin tuna and swordfish, but fishers often take "incidental catch," other fish, and discard them, including marlin, sharks, Atlantic bluefin tuna, and smaller than allowed individuals of the target species. The project would attempt to reduce accidential catch by compensating fishers who agree not to fish during an annual 6-moth period that coincides with the bluefin tuna spawning season. Fishers also would be provided with two alternative gear types for use in catching yellowfin tuna and swordfish during the "repose period."

I've worked out of Santa Barbara coast. First time there. I got to dock and asked if we had a spill. The guys looked at me and asked if I knew where I was at. The dock is in Coal Oil Bay. There is always a slick there. They have a company with a large underwater tent there recovering oil that leaks up from the ocean floor.